My first vampire novel Celic was published in 2008 as a tradeback. It's sequel, Vadas, was just published as an ebook with Wild Child Publishing. I'm now working on the third book titled Dried Blood. Also, I've just finished three short, short vampire stories Arom, StormRiders and Apples. All can be found at my website at www.authorsden.com/jaynewaggoner

I've been working for a couple years on a werewolf-style story. Not a modern story, but more in the kind of horror popular around the late 18th and early 20th century. I'm having trouble keeping a "tone." Sometimes I write and I want it to be a straightforward turn of the century horror story, and at other times I take away the supernatural aspect and make it more "real" by explaining away the supernatural elements and simply relying on crazy people.

Now that the website redesign is up, I am beginning to record characters and notes for my next novel (not Skewered Lambs, I swear!). The story will take place around a city-sized satellite in Earth orbit, which is faced with the possibility of having to defend itself from those on Earth who are agitating to escape our ravaged planet, and may be considering desperate measures.

(All I have right now is a list of character-types and some really vague plot elements, so by the time I'm done, it may end up to be another Kestral story for all I know!)

Just finished a story about immortals with an immortal passion never fulfilled, another about a girl and an alien who both want to escape earth, currently working on a short about a taxi driver who makes a surprising pre-dawn pickup on Halloween and finishing up the last chapters of the Mortgage of Ghosts. Busy, busy

(See my entry above) I have finished my outline notes, and the story timeline (altogether 15 pages, trying to nail down the important points of the characters, setting and story breakdown).

Now I start fleshing out the characters, settings and story elements, until everything feels fairly complete and makes sense. Depending on how well I do at this step, the story may just start writing itself...

At this point, I cannot guess how long this story will be when finished. I can safely say it will be complex enough that it will not be one of my shorter novels. But as long as Evoguia, my longest to date (at 228,000 words)? Longer? I have no idea.

I was going to finish a story for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds that I've been wrestling with off and on for YEARS. This month, I was finally going to finish it!

And then I discovered that Strange New Worlds has been cancelled, and now my short story may as well be worthless fanfic.

D'oh!
Any chance that the story would stand on its own, even without specific and recognizable Star Trek characters as part of it? If so, consider altering the settings and characters and writing it as wholly original fiction. (That's how I ended up with my Kestral stories.)

D'oh!
Any chance that the story would stand on its own, even without specific and recognizable Star Trek characters as part of it? If so, consider altering the settings and characters and writing it as wholly original fiction. (That's how I ended up with my Kestral stories.)

Nope, it's a sequel to a TOS episode. But I'll stick it in a drawer; someone will do a new Star Trek anthology in the future.

Novels are where the money is; my problem is that I'm so much better at writing shorts than novels. You have to fill *so much* in a novel... and yet it can't be just boring, unimportant diversion. You have to write pages and pages where essentially NOTHING HAPPENS yet still make it interesting. I've got a half-dozen novel outlines that I can't complete because they're not fleshed out enough. I *finally* made a breakthrough with my fantasy novel that has me thinking I can fill 200 pages or more, but I'm leaning heavily on the Hero's Journey tropes to do it. And it's frankly one of my less interesting ideas; I'd much rather write one of my other stories first.

You have to fill *so much* in a novel... and yet it can't be just boring, unimportant diversion. You have to write pages and pages where essentially NOTHING HAPPENS yet still make it interesting.

That's the wrong way to think about it. Those "pages and pages" can have plenty happening, even if it's just a discussion that clarifies a point that's past, or one that is coming up. That's not "nothing"... it's an important part of the story. And in periods where, in fact, nothing is happening, you note that and move (write) past it. If you need additional material to fill seemingly empty areas, develop a sub-story that can develop in parallel to the main story (and, if possible, dovetail together nicely at the end).